Will My Enabling Use Be a Problem in Recovery?
If you’re wondering if your enabling use might be an issue in your recovery that needs to be directly addressed, here are some questions to ask yourself. The first is whether or not you have used in the past to make sex possible, easier to have, or more pleasurable. If not, you can stop here because you have not engaged in “Enabling Use” as we’re defining it here. If your answer is yes, you have engaged in enabling use to some degree, so you should continue to the next four questions.
1. Have you used substances to make sex possible or better on a regular basis or all the time?
2. Have you rarely or never had sex sober?
3. Do you have a hard time imagining a sex life without substances?
4. Have you relapsed or do you feel like you might relapse in order to have sex or because you had sex?
If you answered yes to any of the last four questions, sex is fairly likely to come up as a relapse risk in recovery and should be addressed sooner rather than later. If you answered yes to multiple questions, sex is almost guaranteed to be problematic if it goes unaddressed for too long in your recovery.
